A biased exponent in floating-point arithmetic is the result of adding a constant, called the bias,
to the exponent. The bias is chosen to
make the range of encoded exponents nonnegative.
For a binary floating-point normal number, subtracting the bias from the stored exponent
field gives the exponent. In the IEEE
binary formats, subnormal
numbers use a reserved zero exponent
field and an effective exponent of 
.
See also
Arithmetic,
Floating-Point Algebra,
Floating-Point Arithmetic,
Floating-Point Exponent,
Floating-Point
Normal Number,
Floating-Point Number,
Floating-Point Preferred Exponent,
Floating-Point Quantum,
Floating-Point
Representation,
IEEE 754-2008,
Interval
Arithmetic,
NaN,
Quiet NaN,
Signaling NaN,
Significand,
Subnormal Number
Portions of this entry contributed by Christopher
Stover
Explore with Wolfram|Alpha
References
IEEE Computer Society. "IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic: IEEE Std 754-2008 (Revision of IEEE Std 754-1985)." 2008. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEESTD.2008.4610935.Referenced
on Wolfram|Alpha
Biased Exponent
Cite this as:
Weisstein, Eric W., with contributions by Christopher Stover. "Biased Exponent." From MathWorld--A
Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BiasedExponent.html
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